Pixel Droppings

Tell your Republican Senator(s) what you think!

If you can’t safely contact them in person, here are some other options for contacting your Senators:

Five Calls to your critters: https://5calls.org/

Here is one that will send your reps a fax: https://resist.bot/

And another: https://faxzero.com/fax_senate.php

Lost my mind a little and added (if my math is correct) 5,615 beads to Nim Teasdale's Odenwald pattern. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!

The goal was “soothingly weighted but not uncomfortable to wear, even as someone with chronic pain.” It could have been a little heavier, so maybe I’ll make a shawl with larger beads another time, but I’m very pleased with this one. I used size 6/0 seed beads, applied as I go with a .6mm crochet hook.

Yarn-wise, used 2 cakes of YarnArt Flowers. I knitted the fully purple sections from both, then knitted all the way through the yellow-oranges with a single ball. When I hit the beginning of red-oranges, I used yarn from both cakes, alternating between them. (Not the entirety of both, I played it by ear to make sure I made it through the full rainbow.)

I do have edited charts with bead placements. I will only share them with Nim's permission.

is because people have been arrested and put in fucking PRISON just for having gay sex in the privacy of their own homes. in the United States. this millennia.

if you think i'm joking, look up Lawrence v. Texas (2003). 14 out of the 50 US States STILL had laws on the books criminalizing sodomy--and yes, you could be imprisoned for multiple years and sometimes even life for repeat offenses.

in the years directly leading up to the landmark case, enforcement even in those 14 states varied, but it was absolutely weaponized against queer people, especially when stacked on top of other offenses to make up a longer sentence.

"Sodomy" does not, in a legal context, mean "anal sex."

It means "any sexual act the court has decided is deviant."

BDSM? Sodomy.

Crossdressing for sexual pleasure? Sodomy.

Jacking off to nude photos or video your consenting adult lover sent you of themselves? Sodomy.

Het oral sex? SODOMY!!!

If you're starting to think "but how could anyone prove that happened without breaking down the door?"

Ha. Haha. Ahaha.

First, I'll give you one guess how they did prove it.

Two, these were often scapegoat charges--basically they couldn't actually nail you on anything because you hadn't done anything actually illegal, only things they didn't like, and they relied on public disgust against your "degenerate character" (yeah there's a very big reason we keep saying not to use that word and it's not to be killjoys) to make sure you knew your place.

Which means that in practice:

Went to a socialist meeting? Sodomy.

Male kindergarten teacher? Sodomy.

Mixing races? Sodomy.

Not Christian (or the right kind of Christian)? Sodomy.

"Free the nipple" never meant "free to not wear a bra" or "free to breastfeed." Those were adjacent conversations that of course "free the nipple" supporters would boost, but that was NEVER the core of free the nipple.

The core of free the nipple was always that the breasts of people perceived as women ("female-presenting nipples" to use some Tumblr speak) are in no way different than the breasts of people perceived as men. And that since the chests of people perceived as men are not sexualized and are allowed to be exposed, so too should the breasts of people perceived as women. If men can be topless, so can women. If it's inappropriate for women to show their chests, neither should men. It isn't sexual assault for a woman to walk around barechested, because it isn't sexual assault for a man to do so either, and breasts are NOT sexual organs.

Claiming breasts are inherently sexual organs is factually and morally wrong, it is sexist and controlling, it is a tool of oppression, and it defines normal body parts (and bodily functions) as sex which leads to inherent sexualization of people with those parts. It leads to 12 year olds with large breasts being accused of seducing 40 year old men or trying to distract and corrupt their classmates.

"Free the nipple" doesn't mean "free the nipple in a god-fearing way." It means FREE THE NIPPLE, full stop, end of sentence. It means to free the nipple of the faulty social constructs that cast it as a sexualized, malicious force of seduction instead of a normal body part that should be free of expectations of shame or "modesty."

Breasts and nipples aren't shameful, sexual, immoral, porn-adjacent, kinks, a distraction, or things to be feared. They are a part of your body just like your elbows and ankles, and being afraid of them, thinking they will corrupt some innocent person or that being exposed to them is trauma akin to sexual assault, is the entire fucking problem.

Free the nipple, not just for breastfeeding, not just from bras, but from the fucked up social constructs that cast them as malicious instead of innocent. Stop trying to sanitize "free the nipple" for puritanical, conservative audiences who already hate you and the rest of us. You aren't helping anyone.

Lesbian

we doin gallifreyan pride

series for pride month

Aro and ace activism is healthcare reform, so that no one needs to rely on a spouse for health insurance, so that healthcare is available to everybody regardless of income, so that no one’s lived experiences or basic dignity are dismissed or overridden by doctors

Aro and ace activism is well-funded and expansive public transit, so that you don’t need to have someone on hand to drive you places if you are incapacitated, so that you don’t have to pay for an ambulance if you need to get to the hospital quickly

Aro and ace activism is disability and elder care services, so that no one needs a spouse to care for them, so that no one needs children to care for them, so that marriage is not a bind for disabled people, so that people on disability who want to and can live alone can

Aro and ace activism is community-building, it’s public events, it’s free social activities, it’s mutual aid, it’s activities that bring community members together without socializing relying on just a romantic partner

Aro and ace activism is developing a culture of believing when people tell you who they are and what they want rather than assuming you know them better than they know themselves

Amatonormativity affects everyone.

Fighting amatonormativity is an everyone thing.

Making sure everyone can get healthcare regardless of if they have a family member (expected to be a spouse, if you are an adult) who can care for you when you’re ill or injured, can drive you to your doctors’ appointments, who can pay for your medication and medical care when you can’t work, is disability activism. The fact that we have woefully inadequate infrastructure for most of that because your spouse or romantic partner is expected to provide it is, among other thing, amatonormativity.

Untying basic rights in finances, healthcare, housing, immigration, and hospital visitation from marriage so that those tights can’t be taken away if gay marriage is restricted is gay activism. The fact that these rights are tied to marriage in the first place is amatonormativity.

Untying these things from marriage is also polyamorous activism, so in a poly relationship you’re not left with one partner who gets full rights and another partner who does not. It is activism for anyone with any kind of intimate relationship with more than one non-blood-related person. (Hell, it’s activism for people who have a spouse and a sibling all part of the same household.) The fact that marriage, the only taken-seriously relationship you can legally form between individuals as adults, is between two non-blood-related people in a romantic relationship and no other options, is amatonormativity.

Making it easier to survive on your own without a familial support system is queer activism, for all the queer people who don’t have those support systems! And the fact that your spouse is supposed to be your entire support system as an adult is amatonormativity.

Making it so elderly people who don’t have a spouse or children can still get care when they can no longer take care of themselves is elder activism. The fact that your spouse and children are supposed to be the ones who handle that and if you don’t have any then fuck you I guess, is amatonormativity.

Making it possible for a woman to leave her abusive husband, and not lose everything, to live on her own, maybe with her children, and have a place to live and money to live on and infrastructure to support her living without a spouse, is just about the most basic feminist activism that there is. And the fact that society is structured such that staying in an abusive relationship can look like a better option than trying to leave is because of—imagine it!—amatonormativity!

You also just… don’t need to be aro to be single. Plenty of single people are not aromantic and they deserve to have a house and healthcare too.

I got my nails done :3

The AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington DC (USA) in 1996. Photo source: AIDS Memorial Quilt social media.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt was started in 1987 in the USA to show all the lives that were lost to AIDS representing them humanely and not just as a statistic. It was nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. The idea spread to other countries, and it was also done here in Catalonia starting in 1993.

An event with the local AIDS Memorial Quilt in Barcelona (Catalonia) in the 1990s.

Other parts of the quilt. Photos from Catalonia History Museum.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is present in over 40 countries, where about 100,000 tapestries have been made to commemorate loved ones who died due to this illness. It is the largest piece of community folk art in the world.

The Quilt has the objective of keeping alive the memory of the people who died of AIDS, but it also has an educational purpose, showing the diversity of people who were affected by it. AIDS was an extremely stigmatised illness because of its association to gay men, drug users, and prostitutes (even though it affected -and still affects- other people, too), that led to some religious leaders and conservative politicians to state that it was divine punishment and that nothing should be done to help the ill people. People with AIDS, their friends and family, and the queer community as a whole had to fight just to be treated like other ill people would.

Nowadays, it is known that the most important tool to not get or spread HIV is to be protected during sex and not share needles. If a person catches HIV, it can be treated with medication that slows down the virus from developing into AIDS so much that it extends the life expectancy to a standard level, so a person can have a normal life while being HIV-positive. For this, it's important to be tested to find it early. For this reason, the people most affected by AIDS in the present are people from countries with little medical resources, with the highest death rates in Africa.